


Trusted

by SamSavesMe



Series: Diner Verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Eating Disorders, Gen, Pre-Series, Sam Has an Eating Disorder, Teen Winchesters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamSavesMe/pseuds/SamSavesMe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's getting better at hiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: eating disorders, body image issues, hiding and lying. Please don't read if this is triggering for you.

Sam stares at the ceiling and shifts for the thousandth time in bed. There’s no clock in the room for him to confirm the hour, but his eyes are tired and his joints hurt from being awake for so long. This is when, just last week, he would have gotten up and weighed himself. Step up on the scale, wince at the number (never low enough), and crawl back in bed, numb. This familiar dance had practically become his lullaby over the years. He can’t sleep without the routine of it to soothe his nerves. The amount of times he’d had to ditch his current scale and then go buy a new one with his lunch money to avoid detection had reached a ridiculous high, but he always managed. Sam had almost cried in a mixture of joy and dread whenever he walked into a motel room bathroom and noticed a scale in the corner- a rare occurrence, but sometimes he’d luck out.

Now, though, well… Dean and Dad hadn’t let Sam out of their sight since the day he passed out in that diner a week or so ago. After Dean’s heart-to-heart when Sam was fresh out of the hospital the Winchester hadn’t carried on any meaningful conversations. This didn’t stop Dean and John from attaching themselves to Sam like parasites, though. Sam should be grateful. He should be thankful that they’re finally paying attention to him, ought to be thrilled that they’re finally seeing _Sam_. Instead, he’s suffocating. The air inside their apartment is hot and sticky, making Sam’s shirts cling to his bones and stick to his skin. He throws off the cover and shifts once more. If only he could sleep....

The urge to get up and _move_ becomes too strong for him to resist. Sam rolls of the bed and glides down the hallway. He’s light and lithe, not making a sound on the carpeted ground. Dean sleeps on the couch in the main room, while John is curled up on the other twin bed in the bedroom. Both continue to snooze as Sam passes them. Sam lets himself into the bathroom and clicks on the overhead light. He wants to inspect, scrutinize, criticize, but even the thought of seeing his body at the moment makes him want to die. If he’s not careful, all his progress will be ruined within a month with Dean and Dad’s insistence that he stuff his face with food. _Years_ of work, gone in a flash.

His body is weary. Sam leans against the wall and stares. He doesn’t lift his clothes up, doesn’t pinch or examine his stomach or legs. Rather, he looks at the dark circles under his eyes and the hollow of his cheeks. Not even the exhaustion evident in his face can match the exhaustion in his bones.

Sam’s not sure how long he stands there. It could be second or days, or anywhere in between. He’s in a trance, only to be pulled out of it by an insistent rapping sound on the door. Sam opens his mouth. “What?” he croaks, voice cracking from disuse. He’s back in the present now. His breath tastes stale and he hadn’t realized how woozy he was until he tried to take his weight off the wall.

Dean keeps pounding on the door. “Let me in,” he shouts through the wood. Sam doesn’t _think_ Dean would break it down, but he’s not sure, and he’s certainly not in the mood to test his theory. Sam opens it and stands back to let in Dean. He’s surprised by the harsh sunlight that suddenly floods the bathroom. How long had Sam been standing in the bathroom? In the moment it is very cold and his body is shaking.

Dean crouches beside him, and speaks, voice low, “Sam, hey. Come back to the living room. You had me so damn worried when I woke up to your empty bed.”

Sam nods, up and down and up and down. Dean grabs his frigid hands and winces at their chill. He leads Sam into the main area and over to the table near the little kitchen nook. “Sit.”

John’s just now waking up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The family doesn’t usually sleep in this long, it’s nearing eight, but it had been a long week and it seems to finally be catching up to them. “You boys get breakfast yet?” John asks. Dean shakes his head in response. “Well make sure you get on that, then,” he says. His demeanor shifts then. John shifts his eyes away from the boys and rubs his forehead before continuing. “Bobby called a few minutes ago,” he says now, voice gruff as ever. “A hunt waiting for us a couple of states over. It’s a two-man job, and I just can’t do it alone. Sam,” John directs at the younger boy, “you can’t watch our backs right now. I hate to do this, but you’re going to have to stay behind. Dean, son, I need you with me.”

Dean opens his mouth and widens his eyes. He glances at his brother, then his dad, and back. Dean’s eyes flicker and he makes a muted little noise, but he doesn’t protest. For that matter, he doesn’t respond to his dad either. Met with silence, Dad says, “Oughta leave in the next hour or so. Dean, go pack your bag while your brother makes some breakfast. We can eat on the road.”

Dean nods slowly, back tense and lungs full of unreleased air. He backs out of the room to go hunt down his duffle bag, eyes never leaving Sam’s. John leaves for the bathroom, refusing to look at his youngest son. 

That leaves Sam. To make food in the next hour, to be surrounded by calories and butter and everything Bad. Great. 

He scrunches his nose and pulls a carton of eggs from the mini-fridge. This isn’t the first time that he’s cooked for his family since whatever _this_ is started, but it’s just the first time he’ll be expected to eat what he cooks. Cooking used to be a game, a gleeful, joyful game. How many meals can he cook without putting a single bite into his body? Resisting gave (gives) him a rush like nothing else can, makes him feel alive and powerful and strong. Now though, cooking is nothing more than an exercise in trepidation and dread. 

-crack- 1 -crack- 2 -crack- 3. Three eggs into the pan and splash of milk, pinch of salt, dash of oil. Tired, dry eyes and a burner that puts off too much heat but is like a beacon for Sam’s freezing skin.

Dean and John both make their way out around the same time and eat their plates of eggs in silence. John claps Sam on the back on his way out the door. “Take care,” he says. “Keep up on cleaning and training, no slacking just because I’m not here.” Dean pales even further at his father’s side at those words, but still no protest. He pulls Sam around the corner away from their dad’s eyes but not necessarily his ears. 

“Sam,” Dean says. His words are urgent and carry weight, each syllable a dollop of thick pudding as it falls from Dean’s mouth. “I know this isn’t the greatest, but dad knows what’s best. Eat while we’re gone, you’re skinny enough already. Don’t want you losing any more muscle or you’ll be a skeleton and never be able to come back hunting. I know you don’t want to or whatever, but there’s plenty of grub in this apartment. Even you should be able to find something suitable to your delicate taste buds.” 

With that, Dean gives Sam an affectionate shoulder tap and ruffles his hair, pushing it every which way. This is where Sam’s supposed to scowl and groan and call Dean a jerk. Sam doesn’t. He’s too tired. Dean’s eyes get a desperate glimmer to them. He shakes his head minutely and looks even deeper into Sam’s eyes. “Promise?” Sam has no choice but to nod his head numbly.

Sam doesn’t move from the spot until he hears the Impala drive away a couple of stories down on the parking lot. He sinks to the floor as he realizes he is really and truly alone for the first time in days. As much as he had complained about the constant hovering, now that he’s being given some alone time he’s scared. Scared of what’s going to happen and what he’ll do and how he’s going to function. 

Sam crawls back in bed, still in his pajamas. There’s a pan on the stove still with his portion of eggs in it that he _should_ go and put away. Instead, he sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same trigger warnings as before. Really severe eating disorder. Hopelessness and Depression. Self-Harm and mentions of suicide. Please read cautiously.

Sam drifts in and out of the world of sleep. He doesn’t bother checking the clock each time he wakes up. He dreams. Each one leaves him with a hollow sense of longing in his stomach and chest that make them twist and turn. He has a cavern inside of him where his organs should be, and it makes him so fucking empty. Sam can’t take it anymore. 

 

So he sleeps for what must be days and days. 

 

Sam wakes on the third day that John and Dean are gone. His eyes are bleary and heavy with the weight of such a long sleep. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be rested again. Grease forms a heavy layer on his face and mixes with the coat of sweat and grime on his body. Everything about him is so damn _dirty_ , and if he hadn’t already completely lost it he would now. Gross and big and too damn much all well up inside him and Sam is still too fucking tired to deal with it. 

 

He’s too exhausted to even think about what he should do next. Sam doesn’t know what any of this means, why he is the way he is, why he can’t just fucking eat but he also thinks that he might want to die. All Sam knows is he can’t live with this anymore. He wouldn’t kill himself, he really wouldn’t. But starving yourself isn’t exactly the norm for a person with the will to live, either. He’s a junior in high school now- he should have been over this years ago. When he had felt the first signs of depression in third grade he had ignored it entirely, scared and unwilling to face a monster he didn’t have a name for. He’d always thought he’d get over it and move on. Now he’s in so far deep that there’s no way out. Sam’s at the bottom of a well and there’s no light to see by and no footholes or any ledges to offer him hope of a pathway to climb out.

 

Sam has an eating disorder. His eating is disordered, and disordered means bad. His eating needs to change if he wants any chance of surviving to adulthood, because at the rate he’s going he may as well hire somebody to go ahead and start digging his grave. If only Sam could convince himself that dying was a bad thing; it would make the whole convincing himself to eat thing easier. And is that what he’s trying to do? Convince himself to eat? Why would he do that? Of course he doesn’t want to eat. 

 

Everything’s so jumbled and confused in his brain that Sam has to just pull at little strings of thoughts at random and hope he can focus on one or two. Without thinking, he grabs their little apartment phone off the nightstand next to him and dials a number he knows by heart. Sam had called this number almost weekly during his childhood, for help on hunts and research and sometimes even just for a listening ear or a comforting voice. 

 

Pastor Jim picks up on the fifth or sixth ring. “Hello?” 

 

_Silence_

 

“Who’s there?” Pastor Jim asks a few more questions, the pitch of his voice rising slightly in annoyance each time. More silence. 

 

Despite the rudeness of the caller, Pastor Jim doesn’t hang up. His natural compassion, desire to help people, and maybe a little fear keep his hand glued to the phone instead of reaching for the dial button. The line is silent for a few moments, Sam’s light, ragged breathing a background to the steady breaths of Pastor Jim. 

 

Sam breaks first. He hangs up. 

 

Sam returns to bed and curls up once more. His stomach’s as empty as it was when he got up, and he’s not any less dizzy or faint, but somewhere, deep in his chest, something flutters excitedly. If he wants it, help is there. The start of it, at least. All he needs to do is reach out his hand. Even the sight of his blade can’t bring down his mood. His moods have been all over the place lately, back and forth and back and forth like the ball in an unfortunate game of ping pong. He takes whatever high points he can get. Choices, so many choices, and he gets to control all of it. He’s in charge of whether he gets better or worse or even dies. 

 

With that as his last thought, he fades back into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reach out for help if you so much as suspect you could possibly be developing an eating disorder. People want to keep you safe.   
> Call 1-800-931-2237  
> Text 741741  
> Online Chat http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/find-help-support  
> Masterpost with Other Hotlines and more great resources http://but-red-means-stop.tumblr.com/post/129611334937/save-a-life-help-master-post
> 
> Srry for the long update time folks. I'm a mess but hopefully will start updating soon.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more chapters. Don't now when it will be out, probably depending on if people like this and how much motivation I have. 
> 
> Please comment! They mean everything to me. Thanks for reading!!


End file.
